Big Beat Steve

Time to listen to his "Down In the Basement" compilation again now, I guess. With sort of fresh ears. BTW, did anyone ever attempt a comparison of the collections of Joe Bussard and John Tefteller (in those areas where their periods of interest match)?

Leafing once again through my archive of the Swedish ORKESTER JOURNALEN jazz magazine, the other day I came across an item (in the "Reports from the USA" column) in the February, 1956 issue that made me take note: "Fantasy Records seems to be run by gentlemen with a sense of humor. When they mail their new jazz releases they also take the trouble to include funny accompanying letters not even strictly related to the items in question. The other day we received a promo letter where Fantasy announced that in order to compete with RCA Victor they had now set up a subsidiary under the name of RCA Irving. Which of course was a joke, as the hilarious list of the titles of the initial batch of LP releases clearly indicated ...: > IRV 1 (three 12" LPs): "The Toscanini Story": - Toscanini Plays Pretty - Tosacanini at Oberlin - Toscanini with Strings > IRV2 "The Definitive Debussy" by Big Jay McNeely > IRV7 "Tristan and Isolde" featuring Chet Baker and Edith Piaf > IRV8 "German Lieder" by Dinah Washington >IRV9 "Music to Listen to LPs By" >IRV10 "Kostelanetz Plays Brubeck" >IRV11 - "Our Best" - including a.o.: "The Chase" by Gregor Piatagorsky and Pablo Casals "Four Brothers" by The Budapest String Quartet "Moody's Mood for Love" by Ezio Pinza >IRV14 "Stan Kenton Plays Music" >IRV16 "The Original Score From Up In Dodo's Room" by La Scala Opera Co. " Quite hilarious - and fun to imagine what these recordings would actually have sounded like ... The obvious question now: Has anyone ever seen this promo leaflet or a similar item from Fantasy from that era FOR REAL? It might be amusing to see how this looked in complete form, typeset and all, or what else there was from them in the same vein ...

Keeping my fingers crossed that things will improve for you and you will be on the up very soon and over this ordeal of treatment (half-witnessed this kind of treatment three times in my family through the decades - not nice ...). All the best and hang in there - beyond from your playing, your writing ON music is still being needed a lot as well! (I am writing this as I am continuing - part-time - with vol. 2 of your Turn Me Loose White Man)!

Seconded. Overwhelmed by the wealth of info (right up my alley of interest) that this site holds, I went ahead and printed out some of the chapters on "key" labels and artists one day in late 2007, but after several hours, having filled two entire ring binders and feeling kind of dizzy, I had only covered a minor part of the site contents. Then, some time later I of course became aware that these pages were still being updated every now and then so whatever I had printed out tended to become a bit outdated over time. So in the years that followed I checked out the site for reference from time to time, and then, dreading that this site might go belly up one day (it would not be the first excellent collector research site that this has happened to), during the Corona lockdown period in the latter part of 2020 I took the plunge and sat down and downloaded the contents of the entire site, copying each and every chapter and subchapter using the "Select All" Firefox feature into Word files and saving them on my hard drive and on a USB stick. Some 59 files or so in all ... Pity, though, that some of the photographs (mainly label illustrations) are no longer being displayed online. Of course I now know I have to do it all again eventually, depending on updates happening in the meantime, but at least one not all that old version has been preserved for offline posterity.

Unless you have all the singles, i.e. 78s (unlikely ...)´, don't dismiss "comps of earlier singles" outright. If you want to go the vinyl route, the three "The Thundering Herds" LPs on CBS (BPG 62158 to 62160 / CL1959 to 1961) that have the key Columbia items from the 1945-47 period are a very well-compiled package. AFAIK they exist both as 3 individual LPs and as a 3-LP box set. Other releases from the stricter "LP era" (roughly chronological) that I tend to revisit are: - The Woody Herman Band (Capitol T560) - Jackpot (Capitol T748) (Not that I would dismiss "Road Band" but I don't own that LP - yet?) - Woody Herman '58 (Verve MGV-8255) - The Herd Rides Again (don't be put off by the fact it's on the budget-y Everest label - LBPR 5003) The "1963"/"1964" LPs on Philips are also fine.

Yes, she was very high-profile in Germany back in the 70s/80s (and even later in the space that the UJRE occupied) and was considered a fixture of the German jazz scene.

See here:

I guess, then, I was a bit luckier with that label. Some time after I had bought my very first bebop LPs (the Dizzy Gillespie "In The Beginning" twofer on Prestige with his Guild and Musicraft sides from 1945 onwards which (for me) proved to be just about the ideal LP for someone trying to get into (and "get") bebop) I came across copies of the "Bird Symbols" and "Bird Is Free" LPs on the Charlie Parker Records label (real US pressings) in a local record shop that wasn't even particularly well-stocked in jazz. No idea how these LPs (which at that date - 1975 or 1976 - normally would have been long out of print) ended up there and at the right price to top , but anyway... I grabbed them (along with an LP of the Dexter Gordon Dial sides on Storyville) and my bebop exploration continued ...

Does any forumist have any information on whether Jazzmessengers in Spain are likely to get this box set in stock?

Wrong. When the EU copyright laws were revised in 2012 to extend the copyright period to 70 years instead of 50 one key element of the new copyright law was that this extension did NOT apply retroactively. I.e. whatever had exceeded the 50-year copyright period by the effective date of this new EU law in 2012 and was in the P.D. then (i.e. everything prior to that same day in 1962) was going to REMAIN in the public domain. (No, can't be bothered to search online for links to the relevant legal texts but they are out there on the EU websites, e.g. EurLex). Interesting to re-see this thread after all these years. I did not even remember I had let myself get THAT involved in all that. I must have calmed down some since ... but basically IMO it's still this (in line with some of the points raised by David Ayers): Feel free to blast Pujol but as long as his reissues are recordings prior to that date in 1962 (or as long as he DID acquire the rights to recordings past that cutoff date) they are legal by the laws of HIS country. If you don't like that and blame those who sell them outside the applicability of the EU copyright laws, OK - so tell DG, for example, to remove them from their offerings (or else ... ), but OTOH, don't be hypocritical enough either to (for example) buy Japanese reissues that state explicitly on their packagings "Not for sale outside of Japan" (such as the run done by or for Solid Records a couple of years ago).

Ted Daigle. Bob & Lucille. Ray St.Germain. Les Vote. Bob King. plus the amusing occasional R'n'R excursion by Ted Benoit ... etc ... But of course Ronnie Hawkins was right. Being American (and therefore coming from the "right" country for R'n'R) must have given him a big push.

I was of course aware of who he was on the Rockabilly scene of the later 50s almost from my early collecting days starting in the mid-70s. Though at the time it took some filtering beyond the usual comments on him and his backing band The Hawks that became The Band, an aspect that of course was blown up out of proportion in any accessible info on him back in the 70s when info on those 50s acts who were more than just footsoldiers but certainly not kings (to paraphrase one publication by Wayne Russell) relied on accessible facts for readers weaned only on then-current acts. Not much later I managed to grab a reissue LP of about half his original 50s Roulette recordings and was really smitten by his drive and punch. Some time before (groping for anything available at all by those 50s acts beyond the usual big-hit suspects in my youthful urge) I had taken my chances on a copy of his 1971 "The Hawk" album on Cotillion but cannot really say I agreed with one (capsule) biographer who claimed he "rocked better than ever" on that album. It wasn't bad but to my ears it remained a somewhat uneasy mix of Hawkins trying to straddle the fence between modernized reworkings of rockabilly classics, relatively contemporary country sounds and Southern "hard" rock backing band overtones. An "evolution" that tried to cover too many bases at the same time IMO and somehow neither flesh nor fowl overall. Anyway, I may well spin this in remembrance again (for the first time in decades) - so ... RIP; Ronnie!

Too bad ... If I had known abouot this book at the time I'd have loved to get a copy without hesitating (though it is U.S. cartoons only), but now it is firmly out of my affordable price range.

True, but the Sauter-Finegans (or Nick Travis' "The Panic is On", for instance) would be in a different league? And admittedly the "faux Floras" above are at least "nice" (IMHO).

Interesting ... I just checked this out on "our" Amazon. So this is Vol. 1 of FOUR? I see this Vol. 1 already available covers the 1906-1949 period of his life. Vol. 2 is said to include a.o. a discography from 1950 to the end of his life so should cover his post-1950 career. But what are Vols. 3 and 4 going to include (or to put it another way, what will be missing in this Vol. 1?) BTW and FWIW, I just checked Durhamjazz.com to find out more about Vols. 3 and 4 but drew a blank. But I wonder who did the fact checking in the music book section and the list of Eddie Durham's musical involvements? It's a fact Eddie Durham was the musical director of an all-girl band. But was this (quote) "The International Sweethearts of Rhythm fronted by Ina Ray Hutton"? Really? I trust the fact checking in the book worked better.

Very sorry to hear this. I really liked his posts. RIP and my sincere condolences to his family.

Like TTK, I've haphazardly picked up quite a bit of JATP and NGJS vinyls through the years but what I have is far from complete, except for the Verve 10-CD box set with the 1944-49 JATP recordings (which I pull out relatively often). But one I like in a special way is the 1952 session that yielded the "Jam Session #1" and "#2" LPs. One major reason for this is that when I listen to them I take time out to browse through this magnum opus - "Charlie Parker" by Esther Bubley: https://www.estherbubley.com/books_frame_set.htm https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Parker-Esther-Bubley/dp/2850182230 An entire book filed with pics from that recording session (as well as background stories) and featuring all the participants (not just Bird - everyone!) under almost every angle and moment imaginable. A perfect way to really visualize the music and make it come alive ... The book was published by Filipacchi in France in 1995. I bought it during one of my trips to France when it was new and later found out to my surprise that this is no translated version but in fact is a French-only book that never was published anywhere else. Amazing ... (But of course the French are second to none IMO in taking chances in getting even nichiest niche subjects into print and publication)

No doubt.

Exactly - on both counts: The cover you showed is the one I have too, and an OK dust jacket for "masters of the 70s". But here it would be a turnoff. Just like with many record sleeves, this makes you wonder what the "art"work people were thinking in those stylistically garish 70s. Would it really have been that daring in the publishing business in those 70s to play the retro card at least to some extent in such cases and use a jacket a bit more in tune (literally ) with the contents?

This reeks of a flower-power era pressing (that doesn't exactly hint at the contents from a mile away.) My copy (Macmillan 1966) has a much more sober jacket.

I like them all pretty much too and have tended to grab them unheard-untried whenever I came across one (with the inevitable result of ending up e.g. with a duplicate of the Vic Dickenson twofer - two UK reissues from two different periods with two totally diferent covers so I did nto realize I already had it - and it took me a long time to shift my duplicate at last) but I differ somewhat in my preferences from those that Jazzbo named. My personal favorites that I tend to pull out most often are Buck Clayton, Sir Charles Thompson, Jimmy Rushing, and Urbie Green. But you cannot go wrong with the "others" either. And tastes differ anyway.

I think basically they are. The main differences IMO are that 1) they came onto the Swing scene later than the typical "elder statesmen" of Mainstream jazz (Jacquet/Cobb) or AFTER the Swing era (Davis/Griffin), and 2) overall they were stylistically somewhat more modern than the typical Mainstream musicians, including the younger ones such as Ruby Braff, 3) they had their own thing going in modern jazz and so the jazz scribes probably felt far less need to file them under the "Mainstream" tag of (no doubt) unjustly neglected swing-era jazzmen who still had a lot to say. But stylistic boundaries never were that rigid anyway so it is pointless to categorize excessively.

Yes, you sometimes can only guess if it's the artist's child that is shown on the record cover. Like here ...

I remember another forumist (probably not much younger than you) who once described this same maturing and mellowing process with a dose of self-mockery as follows: "Of course I was so much older then!" BTW, as for "Trad" as a British phenomenon, of ocurse the term "Trad" was very British ("It's Trad, Dad!" ) but I'd venture to say that elsewhere in Europe the domestic oldtime/revival jazz scene had its popularity too, e.g. Sweden and Germany. And in France it not only was popular and had a youth audience (before R'n'R and the "ye-ye" era of the very early 60s really caught on) but also led to a real schism between moldy figs and modernists on the jazz scene - not unlike in the US 10 years or so before. Of course France had Sidney Bechet as the towering master of them all who pulled along an entire gang of bands and their followers. Including various excesses by the "fan scene", such as notoriously unruly behavior by certain elements at concerts of the "opposite" camp and all ...